


let her be happy

by heterocosmica



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 17:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12040533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heterocosmica/pseuds/heterocosmica
Summary: barney waits for the moment his feelings for lily disappear





	let her be happy

He thinks of her as his best friend. Not that he’d ever admit it to Ted or Marshall. Or even Robin.  
He knows that the best marriage is a union of best friends and he can’t help but think they would be magnificent together, fire and ice melding. But fire’s got her Marshmallows and ice’s got the Ice Queen and they’re both taken but he can’t think “what if” and that it would be legend…(wait for it)…dairy . And they’d create some bitchin’ sparks.

She’s his go-to person. The one that teaches him about life and emotions and good and evil and she makes him a better person. He resents her for it because, he knows, before, he wouldn’t have felt so much shame for being jealous of the child that now occupies all of her mothering time and energy; she just doesn’t take care of him as much (or, at times, at all) and that hurts.

He feels like, in some other life, they were together (one lifetime is so short compared to the eternity he knows she’ll belong to Marshall for). He sometimes dreams of some other lifetime (but still this one) where she chooses him, where she meets him first, where they are stars because they shine oh-so-bright (and it all seems so right and so fake at the same time, doesn’t it?).  
He thinks there could have been times she would have picked him over Marshall (coulda, woulda, shoulda). And then he thinks he’s delusional (losing it for sure). Because her and Marshall and their little son are such a perfect little family and he hates them for making him hate himself for hating them for…(but, oh, well, he’s still alive so it can’t be as horrible as he feels).

Sometimes, when he feels domesticated with Robin, the images of the time he lived with Lily come back in flashes and he almost expects her to pop up and chase Robin away like she did all those other girls he now sorely regrets even existing. He dreams of her and is disappointed when he wakes up next to Robin (a flicker of hope appears and he thinks that the reality could maybe be the dream; he knows it’s not). He still knows he wouldn’t have done it any other way; she loved Marshall and she always will love Marshall and, even though they were broken up at the time, she still belonged to Marshall (and Marshall is the one that made her happy).

He hopes that, one day, it will all stop; all this desire, love, lust, longing. He knows it won’t. Because, to this day, his most cherished memory is of her showing him San Francisco and smiling and laughing and their hands touching while they walked.  
He knows Robin is the one and he truly loves her but it still hurts when he remembers Lily exists and she’s not his (and never could be).


End file.
